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I decided to just simply stop arguing and just learn every style I could. As much as I want to be a white knight who "saves" software engineering by convincing

I decided to just simply stop arguing and just learn every style I could. As much as I want to be a white knight who "saves" software engineering by convincing everyone to use the most efficient way to work, it's never going to happen. I'm not even sure I know the must efficient way. The biggest obstacle is the anti-intellectualism which weighs down every argument. Very few people even want to learn something new, they just want the ego boost of knowing they shouldn't have to. So now I lead a study group reading through SICP and I call it a day. Better to train up a cohort of people who want to learn than argue with those who even if proved 100% wrong will never budge.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Bingo. Key question to ask yourself: assuming you had a good team that could talk about things, if the other three guys on your team wanted to try something new, but you thought it was a bad idea, would you keep an open mind and give it a good shot? Or would you dig in and come up with the 74 thousand reasons it sucks? There are a lot of really smart guys out there that can argue any subject from any angle better than anybody else in the room. They view conversations as debates and discussions around direction as something that can be "lost" or "won". There's a right and wrong answer, and these guys are almost always right. Don't be one of those guys.